Boehner: Senate Immigration Bill DOA In House

I was afraid I was going to have to start writing my representatives. This is a very bad law.
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House Speaker John A. Boehner on Thursday flatly ruled out chances of the House passing the Senateâs immigration bill, saying his chamber will debate its own bill instead.

Mr. Boehner and his top GOP lieutenants issued a joint statement that seemed designed to tamp down some of the momentum behind the Senate bill, which emerged from a Senate committee on a bipartisan 13-5 vote earlier this week, and to stake out a House GOP position.

âWhile we applaud the progress made by our Senate colleagues, there are numerous ways in which the House will approach the issue differently,â the GOP leaders said in their statement. âThe House remains committed to fixing our broken immigration system, but we will not simply take up and accept the bill that is emerging in the Senate if it passes. Rather, through regular order, the House will work its will and produce its own legislation.â

Mr. Boehner is playing a proxy game of political checkers with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a bipartisan gang of lawmakers tries to write a broad immigration deal that would include legal status for illegal immigrants and a rewrite of the legal immigration system.

Even as those lawmakers are working, however, the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees are writing individual bills on border security, agricultural guest-workers and an electronic verification system for businesses to check workersâ legal status â all pieces of the broader immigration debate.